KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 31 — Dangerous storms during the monsoon season can complicate the recovery of Indonesia AirAsia flight QZ8501 that crashed in the Java Sea, experts have said as today’s search was suspended due to inclement weather.
US paper the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday Robin Beaman, an oceanographer who helped Australia map the sea floor in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 that disappeared in March, as saying that the Java Sea was prone to monsoons and storms that could arise quickly and unexpectedly.
“You can have clear sky and then a squall that comes out of nowhere,” Beaman was quoted saying.
“I try to avoid going out into the ocean during monsoon season—we try not to do anything this time of year,” he added.
International newswire AFP reported today that stormy weather of rains and winds forced searchers to suspend their hunt for bodies from the ill-fated Flight QZ8501.
US news network CNN reported Indonesian search and rescue chief Bambang Soelistyo today as saying that six bodies from the missing plane have been recovered so far after searchers discovered several corpses and wreckage in the sea off the Borneo coast yesterday.
AFP also reported that its earlier report yesterday of Indonesian navy spokesman Manahan Simorangkir saying that 40 bodies were retrieved was a miscommunication by Simorangkir’s staff.
Flight QZ8501, which carried 162 people on board including a Malaysian, disappeared early Sunday morning en route to Singapore from Surabaya in Indonesia during stormy weather.
UK daily the Guardian reported AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes as saying that the weather could have been a factor in the plane crash.
“There were some very unique weather conditions and let’s wait for the investigation to be concluded,” he was quoted saying in a press conference yesterday.
WSJ reported oceanographer Beaman as saying that recovery of the A320 jet in the Java Sea would likely be “infinitely more easy” than the deep-water search for the still-missing Flight MH370 that was presumed to have crashed in the vast southern Indian Ocean.
WSJ quoted him saying that the area where Flight QZ8501 crashed has a flat ocean bottom comprising coarse mud in some parts, and coral reefs and sand in others.
The US paper said the sea floor in between the Indonesian island of Belitung and the western coast of Borneo, where the plane is believed to have crashed, is relatively shallow.
WSJ reported deep-sea recovery expert David Mearns as saying the ocean is only between 10 and 20 metres deep in some parts, which will enable navy ships and oil-and-gas survey vessels to search the area quickly with multibeam echo sounders.
Mearns, who was consulted in the search for Air France flight 447 that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, also reportedly said divers could help retrieve corpses and the plane’s black box if the waters were shallow enough, rather than utilising underwater robots typically used for deeper searches.
